Contrary to popular belief, there was, for a brief
time, an official, licenced home video of Isis!

The tape in question was released in England by a small company
called Select Video, who, incidentally, were an offshoot of World
Publishing, the people behind a lot of the comic "Annuals"
that were popular for a number of years (for the uninformed,
the "Annuals" were hardback books filled with comics,
text stories, activities and photos based on a popular TV show.
For instance, there were several Doctor Who annuals).

After 1985, all video tapes in England were issued what are
known as a video certificate, or a rating, issued by the
British Board of Film Classification to help the parent choose
whether a video is appropriate for their family or not. As this
tape was released in 1984, it is what is known as a pre-cert
or unrated video.

Since this tape came out before video certificates, this title
is not searchable on the BBFC's online data base, so this is
probably why the video's existence hasn't been widely known...until
now!

As this tape was released in England, it was recorded in the
PAL standard, meaning it isn't playable on conventional American
VCRs, which only play NTSC standard tapes.

It is also likely this video was available for no longer than
a year, because all pre-cert videos that were still in-print
into 1985 had to be submitted to the BBFC for a video certificate,
meaning that Select Video would've had to pay for a video certificate
for this title if they wished to continue selling it after 1985.
There is no certificate rating on the package of the two examples
that I've seen pictures of, so one can assume this video went
out-of-print the same year it came out. Most probably, this tape
was aimed firmly at the rental market rather than as a sell-through
release, which could also go to explaining its rarity.

The video has a stated running time of 62 minutes, which is
about the length of three normal episodes. Only one volume was
released. Although I haven't seen an example as proof, this tape
was also said to have been released in the Beta format which
makes sense, as dual-format releases were still common in the
mid 1980s.

As this was released in the early days of home video, the
episodes are all edited into a "movie" format, meaning
there is only one set of opening and closing credits, rather
than individual opening/closing titles for each episode.

There is no real way of knowing how many copies of this video
were made, but it is known that one copy turned up on Britain's
eBay website in 2003. It went for nearly 100 pounds!

It has also come to my attention that the company who released
this tape also released one for Space Academy and one
for The Ghost Busters.

An anonymous Isis fan plans to allow me access to his
collector's copy to do better scans of the box art and to do
a summary of the actual content. I'd also like to thank pre-cert.co.uk
for allowing me to use their scan of the front boxart which accompanies
this article, and to memebers of the Mausoleum Club online forum
who provided invaluable information to me for this piece.